Check out the Astral Deadnought from Mordenkainen's Tome

WotC's Nathan Stewart celebrated hitting 5,000 Twitter followers by sharing a page from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the upcoming D&D book due for release next month. The art gloriously evokes Jeff Easley's art from the cover of 1987's Manual of the Planes (a monster originally called an "ethereal dreadnought" and changed to "astral dreadnought" in D&D 2E).

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[Mistwell]

One fundamental houserule I've made a long time ago is that any time a MM stat block says "3 legendary actions" it means "[number of players - 1] legendary actions".

With six PCs, five legendary actions is a bare minimum to sustain any form of danger, IMHO.

That's a good houserule. Thanks.

 

[Gradine]

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So I think I figured out where id Software got the idea for the Cacodemon from...

 

[Dausuul]

Thoughts:

1. This does a much better job than the 4E Manual of the Planes at evoking the Jeff Easley cover. Though I still miss the vivid, hallucinatory background of the Easley version. A white background doesn't really do it justice.

2. This monster is a fascinating package of abilities. One of the flaws of 5E is that a lot of monsters are just bruisers; fighting them is pretty dull unless the DM goes out of their way to spice up the combat. The astral dreadnought doesn't have that problem. You can drop this sucker on a party in a big empty field* and still have an exciting, dynamic combat. Kudos.

3. Psychic Projection looks like a pretty niche ability. Almost always, the dreadnought is better off using Donjon Visit to banish somebody, then making an extra claw attack. The only time I could see Psychic Projection being useful is if the dreadnought is facing a swarm of weak foes (e.g., from a summon spell).

4. I'm a little concerned about the dreadnought's hit points. 300 hit points is not a lot for a CR 21 monster that's clearly designed for solo combat. Still, it has enough combat tricks to probably make up for it. And bumping up a monster's hit points is one of the easiest adjustments to make.

5. Overall: This is a hell of a sweet monster. If the rest of MToF is like this, I'm gonna be a happy camper.

[SIZE=-2]*Good thing, too, because "big empty field" describes pretty much all of the Astral Plane.[/SIZE]

 

[Dausuul]

Actually it's damage resistance is quite useful because it has that antimagic cone.

Except you can just move out of the cone before attacking. It has little defensive value against a melee opponent. (It does have some offensive value, though, to shut down an enemy's magic armor.)

The cone is most effective against nonwizard casters who are trying to stay at range. If you're right next to the dreadnought, you can escape the cone easily, but if you're, say, 100 feet away and don't have a 17+ Int score, you won't be able to get out of the AoE and still cast a spell that round.

 

[alienux]

Even though I of course know it's not possible, the Warhammer 40k lover in me was hoping just a little bit to see this when I clicked on the thread.

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[timbannock]

I am always amazed how CR is still so frequently misunderstood. The Challenge Rating is a baseline for four basic characters (cleric, fighter, wizard, rogue) without magic items. If the party has magic items that increase their CR and uses the advanced choices of class, feats, and multiclassing then the CR has to move DOWN from this baseline. How much down from the baseline is determined by the tier and the composition of the advanced choices listed above but still more art than science. The CR guideline works particularly well in Tier 1 where the advanced choices have little impact.

For the baseline, the astral dreadnought is exactly where it should be for its CR. A well-optimized party with all available options is looking at being at Tier 3 max for this creature to be an appropriate challenge. Otherwise, as written, this monster is going to have to be modified for a specific party composition.

Honestly, when I read some of these comments, it seems like some people have been playing this game too long to actually have fun with it anymore. The wonder of youth has been replaced with cynicism of age.

Additionally, I find most of the people doing these analysis come at it from the side of a player: they think about the optimized version of each possible character, and a fight staged on completely flat plains bereft of any other obstacles, cover, damaging or hazardous terrain, limited movement, traps, or any other factor.

It's funny to me because the DMG specifically tells DMs to consider adding obstacles, cover, damaging or hazardous terrain, limiting movement in some areas, adding traps, and generally making sure to have lots of factors in a given encounter for players to interact with. Even more so, they double-down on that advice when designing encounters for creatures that have Legendary and Lair actions.

I'll never forget this article, specifically the night hag section: http://themonstersknow.com/hag-tactics/ It shows how much the 5e designers grasp the role of a monster, not just in a combat role, but in service to a story. A night hag plays a long game of duping players and visiting them when they are resting *and* split up. Its powers reinforce that. The second a fight is even possible, the hag has abilities to make it gone. The creature is a wimp for its challenge rating, but played to its designed tactics, it could easily destroy characters and parties of much higher levels.

TL;DR - Hey, players! Get off my lawn!

::looks around::

Anybody wanna play with me? Anybody? No one?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Except you can just move out of the cone before attacking. It has little defensive value against a melee opponent. (It does have some offensive value, though, to shut down an enemy's magic armor.)

The cone is most effective against nonwizard casters who are trying to stay at range. If you're right next to the dreadnought, you can escape the cone easily, but if you're, say, 100 feet away and don't have a 17+ Int score, you won't be able to get out of the AoE and still cast a spell that round.

You are forgetting one of the best ways to use a cone like this. Facing downward, which turns it from a cone into a radius sphere with the size depending on how close it is to the ground. The thing has 20ft and 10ft reaches on it's attacks, so it can easily attack people from out of reach then fly back up to increase the size of the anti magic area. The characters have little way to fight back form this as any magical means of flight and such are getting disabled by the antimagic.

 

[Dausuul]

You are forgetting one of the best ways to use a cone like this. Facing downward, which turns it from a cone into a radius sphere with the size depending on how close it is to the ground. The thing has 20ft and 10ft reaches on it's attacks, so it can easily attack people from out of reach then fly back up to increase the size of the anti magic area. The characters have little way to fight back form this as any magical means of flight and such are getting disabled by the antimagic.

That depends heavily on how the DM interprets the DMG description of the Astral Plane. Specifically, is there a surface which limits non-flying PCs to two-dimensional movement, as on the Prime? Or is it an empty void where everyone moves three-dimensionally?

It isn't at all clear. Based on the description of the Astral as "a great silvery sea, the same above and below" and a "silvery void," and the statement that a creature can "move simply by thinking about moving," I'm inclined toward the second interpretation: The Astral is an empty void and movement is in three dimensions, so this tactic does not work. However, you could make a case for the first interpretation.

 

[Shadow Demon]

That depends heavily on how the DM interprets the DMG description of the Astral Plane. Specifically, is there a surface which limits non-flying PCs to two-dimensional movement, as on the Prime? Or is it an empty void where everyone moves three-dimensionally?

It isn't at all clear. Based on the description of the Astral as "a great silvery sea, the same above and below" and a "silvery void," and the statement that a creature can "move simply by thinking about moving," I'm inclined toward the second interpretation: The Astral is an empty void and movement is in three dimensions, so this tactic does not work. However, you could make a case for the first interpretation.

I wondered at the interpretation as well. It appears that looking at the movement of the astral dreadnought that it can only move 15ft considering intelligence limits it two dimensions (Int 5 x 3 = 15ft). However, it has a natural flying ability not based on Int which is 80ft.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

That depends heavily on how the DM interprets the DMG description of the Astral Plane. Specifically, is there a surface which limits non-flying PCs to two-dimensional movement, as on the Prime? Or is it an empty void where everyone moves three-dimensionally?

It isn't at all clear. Based on the description of the Astral as "a great silvery sea, the same above and below" and a "silvery void," and the statement that a creature can "move simply by thinking about moving," I'm inclined toward the second interpretation: The Astral is an empty void and movement is in three dimensions, so this tactic does not work. However, you could make a case for the first interpretation.

There is no floor. But there are drifting chunks of landmasses. Along with Astral ships, from descriptions the person floats weightlessly. The movement option outright says that it's a walking speed.